Strong El Niño could bring increased sea levels, storm surges to U.S. East Coast
New study examines how El Niño in cold months affected water levels over past 50 years
A new NOAA study found coastal areas along the East Coast could be more vulnerable to storm surges and sea level rise in future El Nino years.
High resolution (Credit: NOAA)
Coastal communities along the U.S. East Coast may be at risk to higher sea levels accompanied by more destructive storm surges in future El Niño years, according to a new study by NOAA. The study was prompted by an unusual number of destructive storm surges along the East Coast during the 2009-2010 El Niño winter.
The study, led by Bill Sweet, Ph.D. from NOAA’s Center for Operational Oceanographic Products and Services, examined water levels and storm surge events during the ’cool season’ of October to April for the past five decades at four sites representative of much of the East Coast: Boston, Atlantic City, N.J., Norfolk, Va., and Charleston, S.C.
From 1961 to 2010, it was found that in strong El Niño years, these coastal areas experienced nearly three times the average number of storm surge events (defined as those of one foot or greater). The research also found that waters in those areas saw a third-of-a-foot elevation in mean sea level above predicted conditions.
“High-water events are already a concern for coastal communities. Studies like this may better prepare local officials who plan for or respond to conditions that may impact their communities,” said Sweet. “For instance, city planners may consider reinforcing the primary dunes to mitigate for erosion at their beaches and protecting vulnerable structures like city docks by October during a strong El Niño year.”
El Niño conditions are characterized by unusually warm ocean temperatures in the Equatorial Pacific that normally peak during the Northern Hemisphere “cool season.” They occur every three to five years with stronger events generally occurring every 10-15 years. El Niño conditions have important consequences for global weather patterns, and within the U.S., often cause wetter-than-average conditions and cooler-than-normal temperatures across much of the South.
November 2009’s Mid-Atlantic Nor’easter brought damage to the Hampton Roads, Va. area, to include a barge that grounded onto Virginia Beach.
High resolution (Credit: NOAA)
The study builds on previous ocean-atmospheric research, which has concluded that during El Nino Nor’easter wind storms are more frequent along the East Coast during the ‘cool season’. El Niño and its impacts usually fade in the warmer months, and which may transition into La Niña conditions, which are generally opposite to those of El Niño. However, a similar connection between La Niña conditions and depressed East Coast sea levels was not found.
“This research furthers our understanding of the interconnections between the ocean and atmosphere, which are so important in the Earth’s climate system, and points to ways this greater understanding can be used to help coastal communities prepare for the winter season,” said Keith L. Seitter, executive director of the American Meteorological Society.
The study was published this month in the journal Monthly Weather Review of the American Meteorological Societyand can be found online at http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/MWR-D-10-05043.1
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Great news that they can now predict El Niño/La Niña.
Oh, no, wait. So sorry, they can’t predict it at all.
The take-home message is to prepare for anything I guess.
Paywalled … there has to be a better way to do science.
w.
“……..four sites representative of much of the East Coast: Boston, Atlantic City, N.J., Norfolk, Va., and Charleston, S.C.”
Hi Chris (aka savethesharks), you apprear to be doomed!
“Thank you for visiting a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) website. You have chosen to proceed to a non-government website for additional information. NOAA and the U.S. Department of Commerce do not endorse this website or the information, products or services contained therein.”
So – not only is it paywalled, but NOAA does not endorse the website or information, products or services contained therein. Sheesh…
“From 1961 to 2010, it was found that in strong El Niño years, these coastal areas experienced nearly three times the average number of storm surge events (defined as those of one foot or greater). The research also found that waters in those areas saw a third-of-a-foot elevation in mean sea level above predicted conditions.”
1/3 of a foot is 4 inches, but I guess that sounds really, really small to most readers who didn’t want the mental image.
“1/3 of a foot is 4 inches”.
It’s worse than that. It is also about 10cm. I blame the French.
(Thank you Ryan Maue for your excellent work.)
[ryanm: thanks, i’ll be posting tomorrow on La Nina]
You live on the coast near sealevel and you are vulnerable to getting wet when there are onshore storms in the winter!
Well blow me down!! Without the tireless dedicated work of the scientists (struggling to emerge from the morass of well-funded and organised Big Oil deniers, creationists and Campers who ,make hourly death threats to them) I;d never have guessed.
Sheesh..Sea, onshore wind, + waves = wet!!
I wonder how it feels to be the first in the history of humanity to make this truly remarkable connection!
Like ‘some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star’d at the (Atlantic)’
For those in UK who are unaware of exactly how significant a finding this is, 4 inches is about the depth of a whole standard housebrick laid on both sides with mortar.
They are all doomed!!!
/sarc off
Ryan Maue says: July 16, 2011 at 1:18 am
1/3 of a foot is 4 inches, but I guess that sounds really, really small to most readers who didn’t want the mental image.
Sorta like a “McDonald’s Four Ouncer with Cheese.”
Or maybe “Fourteen Thousand Million Dollars of Debt” instead of 14 Trillion.
Ryan Maue wrote:
“1/3 of a foot is 4 inches, but I guess that sounds really, really small to most readers who didn’t want the mental image”
Well, the house next door costs a quarter of a million dollars and yesterday I ate a quarter pound burger. I think the climate conspiracy must be spreading… I see it everywhere!
Anthony, I know you wanted to have a break but you can’t deny it’s all hotting up. The fever is and the warmists are sweating. We have to keep it up.
fever is rising
Willis Eschenbach says:
July 16, 2011 at 12:24 am
Paywalled … there has to be a better way to do science.
Yes – this is a constant frustration. I can perhaps understand it if the research is funded privately but who funds NOAA research. If it’s ultimately down to the taxpayer surely it should be available to all US citizens. I’m not sure where that leaves me (a UK citizen) though.
“For instance, city planners may consider reinforcing the primary dunes to mitigate for erosion at their beaches and protecting vulnerable structures like city docks by October during a strong El Niño year.”
Haul this heretic up before the Inquisition. The one true religion is in charge of all mitigation. Beaches and vulnerable structures can only be protected by making atmospheric CO2 levels 350 ppm. 350 ppm 350 ppm (/Gregorian chant off)
Storm surges do not change basic sea level. If there is a storm surge somewhere the sea will be lower outside the surge area. The sea level datum stays the same. Thermal changes are slow to react to temperature changes because water holds a lot of heat and is a poor thermal conductor so temperature changes take time, and a constant temperature increase for the thermal expansion/contraction to take place. We are talking many years over the whole ocean volume, 1000-1500 years for total circulation. By comparison a storm surge is the blink of an eye.
When Hugo came ashore at Charleston the average surge was 15 feet above high tide. Some areas such as Isles of Palms was about 20 feet and almost literally cut the island in half. Further studies indicate that an island on the south east coast of the US gets reduced to below sea level on average once per 500 years due to large hurricanes such as Hugo. Instead, we worry of 4 inches.
Since no one has proven that this increase in storm surge did not occur prior to 1961, it is taken as fact the El Niño conditions exacerbating the tides must be caused by Global Warming.
/sarc
And we are back to averages again.
A ‘storm’ to anyone who has lived on the coast means rough sea and big waves. Four inches is barely a ripple. I have crossed the North Sea and English Channel with waves heights up to the top deck of a ferry probably around 40 – 50 ft. Would people at Cape Hatteras get terrified at a four inch breaker crashing down? 😉
So seriously, in storm conditions with large breaking waves and troughs – what is ‘average sea level’ and how is it measured? Lets see the method and assumptions before we all comment on the results.
Remember NOAA is the agency with no quality control on its automated weather observation sites; so nothing that NOAA publishes can be taken on trust.
A thousand million is a billion, a thousand billion, now you’re talking real money 🙂
The winter of 1977-1978 was pretty wild on the coast of New England, and was just past the peak of a weak El Nino.
Many remember the super-storm that shut down Boston in February, 1978, and gave east-facing shores a terrific pounding.
However a few weeks earlier there was another huge storm that traveled north well to the west of New England, giving New England very strong winds from the south. These winds pushed waters up into the southeast facing harbors in Maine, where I lived, and the storm tide came as a complete surprise.
I happened to be living in a small shack on a dock, and was busy writing the Great American Novel when I became aware the tops of waves were slamming against the floor louder and louder. Pretty soon my rug started to lift, due to the rush of squeezed air that preceded each wave, and then, as the wave thudded against the underside of the dock, fountains of water would spurt up through the cracks between the floorboards. I decided to exit stage left, but only managed to carry a few cardboard boxes of my stuff to my car before there was a loud crack, and the shack slowly slid down into the water like the Titanic.
Old-timers told me that shack had been there since 1908, and the only time it came off the dock before was due a howling frontal passage in January, when wind alone had lifted the shack off the dock and dropped it on the winter ice.
The dock was repaired and the shack jacked back up, but with Yankee pragmatism they built the entire structure about a foot higher.
The range of normal tides in that area was over twelve feet, but a couple of extra feet of surge, at the time of high tide, really made a big difference. A great deal depended on the fetch of the wind. The storm that clobbered Boston a few weeks later had little effect in Maine.
One worry in Boston involves the tunnels of the “Big Dig.” A hurricane’s storm surge, at high tide, would put several extra feet of water atop those tunnels, which is a huge increase in weight. Some worry that, even if the engineering is sound, that sub-standard cement was used.
Those tunnels leak even on sunny days. I’d stay out of them in a storm.
The paywall give them some protection from cross examination.
RELatimer Alder says:
July 16, 2011 at 2:17 am
“Like ‘some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star’d at the (Atlantic)”
I always really liked that poem by John Keats, but he did get it wrong. It was Balboa, and not Cortez, who “discovered” the Pacific. However he can be forgiven. “Stout Balboa” simply ruins the flow of the poem.
tokyoboy says: (July 16, 2011 at 12:26 am) “Hi Chris (aka savethesharks), you apprear to be doomed!”
I believe Chris not only saves the sharks, tokyoboy, but even swims with them, so I am confident they in their turn will take him to a magic cavern free of such perils if need be — however, I think tsunami sea level rises are of more concern as your contrymen discovered, and hope you have had your one and only once-in-a-lifetime experience of them.
Having looked at the numbers for these stations, there does seem to be some sea level rise during El Ninos (not so much in Charleston).
http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/resids80/8443970.png
http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/resids80/8534720.png
http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/resids80/8632200.png
http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/resids80/8665530.png
Implicit in the study is that there will be more frequent and more severe El Nino episodes (computer models again?). With the PDO in its cold phase, that seems unlikely
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/content/interactive-sea-level-time-series-wizard?dlon=234&dlat=42&map=v&fit=n&smooth=n&days=60&coor_x=324&coor_y=56
no visible sea level effect from the major 1998 el nino!!